"makes sense"

You have no idea of the reflection you provide. I take what you say as a compliment even though you said it after the frustrating experience of losing. But it’s the cards…really. Skills is only a side dish to the main course, the cards. By the cards I mean the run of the luck. And this luck has nothing to do with how well you play your cards. But, the better you play your cards the more you take advantage of the luck that comes your way.

I think the choice of discard, looking for the outside chance for a specific card has been coming to me lately. Then, when that card shows up…it’s luck. But I was laying for it, laying for luck. Layin’ for? What does that mean? SouthMidlandU.S.to plan or scheme (often followed by out).

So, I’m laying out my luck the way I play gin. I make choices not waiting to fill the obvious pair with a third of forth, but hold onto the fifth card of a sequence when the forth card is missing.

I guess the question is, is your luck dumb luck or planned for luck. Is it just luck, or do you have anything to do with it?

I’m the first one to acknowledge that luck runs through Gin on a very long wavelength. And there’s nothing you can do about it, except maybe step out of the stream and re-enter at a later time.

Opponent, you are not allowing for me to have grown over the time we’ve played. Instead of lucky, maybe I’m just playing better? Maybe I’ve learned? If I were to be asked what have I learned over the time I’ve been playing with you I’d include the following:

I always play as though I’m playing against you.

When the score is double, dump points first, knock as soon as you can.

Play your own hand. PLAY YOUR OWN HAND. PLAY YOUR OWN HAND!

Almost never take a first card ace that doesn’t complete a meld. Just an ace for points will work against you in a game that requires gin.

Compare what you pick up to what I have in my hand and move a suspected card that you might want off to the side, until it becomes necessary to throw in order to play my own hand.

When you have to gin, forget about points. (Well, think less about them, and focus on possibilities.) So, must gin games are not played like games where you can knock.

"One circumstance that helped it was the Depression, when more and more people had less and less to spend on going out and enjoying themselves and had to rediscover the art of amusing themselves at home. Gin was much simpler to learn than Contract Bridge, and more congenial in the family circle than Poker.

But perhaps what really helped it on its way was its popularity with actors, stars and the celebrity-seeking riff-raff of Broadway and Hollywood, and the consequent publicity the game attracted to itself. Hardly a film of that period fails to mention it somewhere, or at least get it on screen. Even Flora Robson as Elizabeth I and Errol Flynn as the Earl of Essex appear to be playing it - though, unfortunately, not mentioning it - in The Sea Hawk (1940).

Two features of the game made it attractive to those hanging about in the wings waiting for their cue, or in the studio waiting for the greens man to revive the pot plants. One was that it was very fast to play but could, if necessary be left off at a moment's notice and easily picked up again as soon as the players were free. The other was the introduction of an ingenious scoring device - the so-called Hollywood Gin variety - whereby you could (in effect) play three games simultaneously, or even an endless series of them.

Dale Armstrong reports:On one occasion, in a desperate effort at rescue, the [Burbank Lakeside Country] club's House Committee was forced to persuade rotund comedian Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy fame) to stay out of the card room, where the Gin sharks had been eating him alive for months, to the tune of four figures a week." Dave Parlett